Much to my shame and chagrin, I've started watching Battlestar Galactica again. Right before the second half of this season started, there was a marathon where they replayed the season from the start. I had been channel flipping at the time and decided to sit and watch around 6 hours of catchup. I figure I'm still missing at least a dozen episodes in the story from when I stopped watching the show, but it doesn't seem to have interfered with understanding the plot. Since then, I've tuned in each week to catch each new episode and I can't help but be irked.

i've thought a bit about it and I think I've realized what bothers me so much about the show. At its core, it's the fact that whoever is writing this piece of crap is lazy as hell. This entire series has been one example of cheap gimmicks and Deus Ex Machina after another. Whenever it seems they had no interesting story left to tell, you could almost guarentee they would pop out a new skinjob cylon for a grand reveal. OMGWTFBBQ?! He can't be a cylon! Muahahaha, but he is! He is! And now you have to acknowledge that we have just turned your world upside down and what you thought was what was but is not what now is. After the fact that there were no more normal cylons to use as a jack in the box, we're given the 'final 5' which are even more of a screw you to the audience. Nothing is based on proper foundation and writing. It's all just rollercoaster bullshit meant to keep you tuning in week after week so you can see what new amazingly shocking thing happens next. Even when they're not playing the twister wheel 'o cylons, deus ex machina is all over the place. People disappear and then pop out of nowhere with all the answers. People get whacked in the head and all of a sudden know everything. There are time flashes forward and backwards to set up huge alternate narratives that make less than no sense other than to patch in exposition that someone stupidly left out the first time around. It's just pathetically lazy. All of it.

I dunno how much the show's creators can be blamed for this and how much of the blame is due to the nature of the beast. It must be hard writing for a show like this when you never know if you're going to be canceled or not. Still, others have managed to pull it off quite well and never had to resort to the gimmicks that are so often at the core of Battlestar Galactica. I really wish that tv shows were all storyboarded somewhat in advance and tv stations had to commit to multi-year runs. Maybe that would take some of the uncertainty out of the equation and writers wouldn't feel the need to feed their audience choppy crap.

At this point, I'm sure I'll continue watching the last few episodes until the show's conclusion. I just can't see being happy about it. There's been so little foundation laid that it's almost guaranteed that the ending is going to be herky jerky crud. This past week's episode was atrotious in that manner. None of it had been set up previously and all of the exposition was just dropped in the viewer's lap like a steaming pile. We might as well have Adama stumble over a copy of the script for the next few episodes and just write it into the show. According to this...I'm a cylon too! OMGWTFBBQ!